


Driving Lessons

by darkstark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Driving Lessons, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:29:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5487047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkstark/pseuds/darkstark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a driving instructor, Stannis thinks it's important to give his students the best example by always being focused on the road. But how can he do that when he keeps getting distracted by the outrageously beautiful Sansa Stark, his new student?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driving Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!   
> So I recently started taking driving lessons myself and I've been thinking it would be fun to have Stannis be Sansa's instructor, no? We'll see I guess. I don't live in the U.S. (I assume most people here are Americans), so I've based some of the whole procedure on what I've read about driving lessons in the U.S. and some on what I know from experience in my country. If however I use the wrong words for car parts or driving in general, feel free to point it out, because I'd like to get it right.  
> I have to say this is going to be a bit of an experiment. Writing dialogue and anything longer than 5 chapters is really scary, but I'm willing to give it a go. So proceed with trepidation, dear readers. I do hope you enjoy this. :)

It started like most things start, without warning or preamble.

It was a sunny afternoon, early in autumn. Outside the leaves on the trees were still green, and the breeze was warm and smelled of freshly cut grass. Autumn in King’s Landing was like a better version of summer – warm but not asphyxiating, sunny but not blinding. People loved this time of the year.

Stannis was purposefully ignoring the nice weather, hiding behind his computer screen. He was looking at the screen intently, despite the brightness that was making his eyes sting. The thing about e-mails was that they were supposed to be a lot less personal than hand-written letters. And yet, in the Calibri font he could read his ex-wife’s hand writing, and he could guess the words which she would underline with a pencil, even though she used no italics and no bolds. He could sense her bitterness too, despite the dry style of the text. It was the usual unpleasant issue – Selyse complaining that the alimony wasn’t enough although the matter had been settled with lawyers already a few years ago. But this time, there was a postscript: _It wouldn’t hurt if you called your daughter more often._

He wanted to be angry at her, at her insinuations, the same way he got angry with her shameless greediness. Only he couldn’t, because she wasn’t entirely wrong – and it pained him to admit it. He didn’t talk with Shireen as often as he ought to. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. It was just that other things sometimes got in the way, and some other times he would look at his phone and wonder what on earth they could talk about. He loved her of course, and he’d hate her to think that he ignored her, but phone conversations were always slightly awkward for him. It was easier for him when he saw her in person and he could read her expression and be there for her with his physical presence and not just his useless words, but sadly they never had enough time to-

“Um, excuse me. I’m interested in taking driving lessons. Is there someone I could talk to?”

He finally peeled his eyes from the computer screen to the direction of the voice. Bright lights were swimming in front of his eyes for a few moments, but he could see that someone –a girl? a woman?- had popped her head in his office.

“Excuse me?” he grumbled, his thoughts still half-lost in the wretched e-mail.

“Um. Hello. I am interested in taking driving lessons. There’s no one in the reception area, so…” she trailed off, uncertain.

For a moment he wondered how it was possible that she had only found him in the entire school, but then he remembered that Pia had needed to leave early that day, and Davos was teaching the signs to a bunch of teenagers.

“Yes. Of course. Please come in” he said, blinking, trying to make the swimming lights leave his eyes.

She opened the door fully to step into his office, and his mouth went dry. She was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful women he had seen in his life. Her body was slender, with endless shapely legs, her skin was milky white and her hair long and auburn, like the leaves of the trees would be at the end of the season. She smiled faintly as she sat on one of the chairs opposite to his desk, and he swallowed hard, panicking slightly because he could feel his cheeks flushing a little.

_What was wrong with him?_ He wasn’t the kind of man that payed too much attention to women. Surely, he was not as cold and bloodless as his older brother claimed, but he could control himself a lot better than Robert ever did. To get so flustered was beneath him, he thought with shame, but he couldn’t help it – he had not been prepared for her beauty.

The girl turned her bright blue eyes from him to leave her bag on the floor next to her chair and to bring her hair over one shoulder, mercilessly exposing the other one, and Stannis took the chance to take a deep breath and calm himself. The truth was, beautiful people made him uncomfortable. They always had an ease about them, that reassurance that they could get what they wanted somehow, _because_ they were so beautiful. If there was something that Stannis loved, that was meritocracy. And beautiful people seemed to always laugh at its face.

“So. What can I do for you?” he asked in his most professional tone, when the girl straightened her back and turned her attention back to him.

“As I said, I’m interested in taking driving lessons” the girl said with a small smile playing on her lips, and Stannis realized a little too late that he had made her say the same thing three times now.

“I see. Are you at all familiar with the procedure?”

“No, not really. I know I was supposed to learn when I was still at school, but… well I didn’t” she said quickly, the smile vanishing from her face and her eyes taking a hardness on them, as if she was daring him to question her choices. “But I’ve been told that you also offer lessons to adults, so…” her voice trailed off again. She seemed to be going with fits and starts, starting with liveliness and somewhere in the middle of it all inexplicably losing her momentum and stopping, almost deflated.

“It is never too late to learn how to drive” he said firmly, regaining some of his self-control. This was something he believed so strongly, that for a moment he managed to ignore how distracting her presence was. 

“Oh good” she said and her eyes brightened a little.

“I assume you will have questions” he said, forgetting his previous state with every word. This was easy and familiar. He knew how to do this, he knew how to be a professional.

“Yes. If there are any requirements, how much time it will take, and of course, how much it will cost” she said, shaking her head a little and making her hair shine even under the cold office lights.

“It’s quite simple. You need to first pass a written test, to certify that you are familiar with the signs and laws of Westeros. You can use the Driver Handbook to prepare, which you can pick up from the Department of Motor Vehicles. In our school we offer online courses to help with the preparation, which you can find on our website; alternatively we also offer actual classes with instructors here at the school, but they are packed with adolescents and you might find them tiring. When you’re ready, you will sit for your exam at the DMV, where they will also check your eyesight. Once you pass your exam, you will be given a Learner’s Permit. Then you can return here and commence your actual driving lessons” he said in a somewhat monotonous voice. 

The girl was taking notes furiously, which gave him the chance to study her a little bit more. She was dressed simply, in a white tank top and a flowing, short flowery skirt, and she was wearing no makeup from what he could tell. And yet there was an elegance about her, in the way that she was sitting or even scribbling in her notebook. Against the boring backdrop of his office, her beauty was almost surreal.

“How many lessons will I have to take before taking the test?” she asked once she stopped scribbling, her pen now wavering over the notebook.

“It depends on the individual’s needs. Usually it is advisable to have around 20 lessons, especially with students who have no previous experience” he said calmly.

“And the cost?” she asked again, still writing down his previous answer.

“Depends on the number of lessons. It will probably cost around 300 gold dragons” he said.

“Standard price” he heard her muttering approvingly as she was taking a note of that too.

“Any other questions?” he asked. He sounded a little too abrupt perhaps, because she looked up at him with wide eyes, but he only meant to be helpful.

“Um. No, I don’t think so, thank you”

“In case you need to ask something, you can call here at the school” he said, feeling a little awkward as he gave her a business card. This was a part of the job he had never liked, this subtle way of advertising and self-promoting, the sly ways you made people think you were nice. Stannis didn’t think a driving instructor had to be nice, or helpful to the point of servitude. They only had to be professional, patient and have excellent reflexes. 

“So I should contact you after I pass the written test?” she asked, tucking her notebook away.

“Yes. You can come here for the registration and to schedule your lessons. That is, if you choose to have your lessons here” he added as an afterthought. He never liked it as a customer when a business just assumed he would be choosing them, and he liked making it clear to his own potential clients that they were not in any way bound to him and his business just because they asked for some information.

“Oh no, I will definitely be returning. I have heard good things about the school. Besides, it’s very close to King’s Landing University and that’s really convenient for me”

“Ah. Yes. That’s… good” Stannis said. He usually kept conversations with his students strictly professional, but for the first time in a long time he felt compelled to find something else to say. It took him a little too long though, and an awkward silence fell in the room.

“Well. Thank you for all the information, Mr.… Baratheon” she finally said, after a quick look at his business card. She got up and hoisted her bag on her left shoulder, making her hair cascade over to the right one, in one fluid, graceful movement.

“Thank you for showing us your preference, miss…?

“Stark. Sansa Stark” she said, smiling at him again, and gave him her hand to shake. Her skin was cool and soft like silk, and her grip was firmer than what he would have expected.

“Oh, just one last question” she said when she was already at the door. “Do you only have automatic cars?”

“No, we also have some cars with manual transmission” Stannis said, baffled a little by the question.

“Good. Because I would much rather learn how to drive stick”

She thanked him once again for the help and wished him a good evening, and just like that she left, taking all of the room’s oxygen with her.

Davos popped his head in Stannis’s office just a few moments later. Apparently his class was over.

“New student?” he asked curiously, with that benevolent expression he always wore on his face, even when the teens he was instructing were being real brats and Stannis would be tempted to abandon them at the side of the road. “Hey, are you alright?” he asked after taking a second look at his boss.

“I’m fine” Stannis said with a scowl. “Yes, she’s going to take classes here” _I hope. I hope not._

“Hm, our schedules are already quite tight. The teens are a handful as always, and Pylos is already very busy with the courses for the disabled, and Colemon has been having a lot more seniors who need a license renewal this year, since they just changed the law…” Davos said thoughtfully, and Stannis scowled even more. 

“I know all that” he snapped at his friend and employee. It wasn’t people’s fault if they sometimes told him things he already knew, but he still disliked it.

“Perhaps she can try at the other branch, Massey shouldn’t be too busy at the moment” Davos suggested, completely unfazed by Stannis’s irritability. He had known him for too many years to worry about his sour mood.

“No. It’s alright, I can take her over” Stannis heard himself say, and he supposed that the incredulous look on Davos’s face matched his own. He took very few students nowadays, focusing mostly on the managing of the school and its two branches.

Davos raised an eyebrow, which could mean anything really, and Stannis resorted to his usual scowl. 

This was either a brilliant, or a terrible idea. Probably a terrible one.

***

Sansa walked out of the driving school into the warmth of the golden afternoon, her heart swelling and her lips parting in a grin. She felt the inexplicable desire to laugh. She took out her phone and quickly dialed Margaery’s number. She was too excited to waste time texting. Thankfully Margaery picked up at once.

“Hey, lemon cake” she said, with that laugh always echoing in her voice, like a joke that she kept for herself.

“I did it!” Sansa said, not bothering with explanations. Margaery knew. Margaery had been supportive.

“You did it?! Today? Now? You sly thing, you didn’t say a word! I’m still on campus, come over by Baelor’s fountain, you have to tell me _everything_!”

Sansa ended the call with an even bigger grin on her face, her friend’s overt enthusiasm pushing the air out of her lungs in the shape of laughter. It seemed unimportant, silly, but to her it meant a lot. She was on her third semester in university, and yet right at this moment she felt more in control of her life than she had when she had first moved to King's Landing.

She walked quickly towards the campus grounds, joy making her steps so light that she was almost skipping along the pavement. 

This was a truly brilliant idea.

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest there's another Stansa I wanted to post but it's not finished and I did want to post something now because I'll be visiting my boyfriend for the holidays (long distance relationships are an extreme sport not meant for the faint-hearted - don't try this at home, kids) and I won't have time to write anything for the next couple of weeks. So, this will not get updated any time soon. But it will, eventually, at very irregular intervals.


End file.
